AAGE MARCUS - PIET HEIN Danish 20th century writers. (1966)
To try and grasp the kaleidoscopic phenomenon called PIET HEIN it will be best to begin with his data.

He was born on 16 December 1905 as the son of graduate engineer Hjalmar Hein, whose family originally came from the Netherlands, and eye specialist Estrid Hein. Like Karen Blixen’s mother, she was a granddaughter of the merchant A.N. Hansen, and this meant that Piet Hein’s and Karen Blixen’s mothers were cousins. His childhood home was in Rungsted Skovhus, where he still lives.

Having passed his upper secondary leaving examination (mathematics line) from Metropolitanskolen in 1924 and his Part I philosophy course under Frithiof Brandt the following year, he moved to Stockholm in order to study to become a painter at the Royal Swedish College of Fine Arts, where his teachers included Albert Engström. He returned to Copenhagen, however, as early as 1927, where, apart from attending lectures in philosophy at the University he studied until 1931 at the Institute for Theoretical Physics under Niels Bohr. Here he constructed a model to visualise the theory of complementarity and apparatus, the atomarium, which aroused the interest of researchers. His participation in the symposiums, meetings where the new epoch-making discoveries within atomic theory were discussed, were also specially rewarding for him.

In the following years, he devoted most of his time and energy to various inventions, such as an ingenious rotor machine and the coloroscope, which can be described as a device for producing light effects in which the spectrum swings as it were from spatial to temporal existence.

Over the years, he has also invented numerous, often highly original puzzles and games. Worth singling out is his variant of an ancient oriental game which, under the name Hex, was much discussed in scientific journals, the beautiful teasing object he calls the Soma cube, the Polygon game – and several others. In addition, there is a whole range of new constructions of many types of articles of domestic use, including a lock that is as simple as it is sophisticated, and items within industrial design. Lastly, it should be mentioned that when the central square was to be designed in Stockholm, it was Piet Hein who pointed out the geometrical figure of the superellipse as that which would provide the optimum solution in terms of both traffic and aesthetics.

As well as such activities, he also actively took part in the liberal political movements for which there was so much justification in the 1930s. From 1935 to 1955, he was a board member of the Danish branch of The Open Door International, and from 1940 for the national association Liberal Cultural Struggle, as well as later for the national One World association and for the League for Tolerance. That he also is a member of the Adventurer’s Club has to do with his many extensive journeys and stays of several years in both North and South America and around Europe. But not until mentioning that he also is a member of the International P.E.N. Club do we approach that side of his activities that has to do with literature.

Already in the 1930s, Piet Hein had written a number of articles on humanistic and scientific subjects, but his literary production proper first began when the strange small poems he calls Grooks started to appear in Politiken shortly after the Nazi Occupation in April 1940.

The production of a whole series of interrelated short texts is, of course, nothing new. Fine examples of this genre are the witty lines of Fritz Jürgensen, the ingenious nursery rhymes of Louis Levy and Storm Petersen’s ‘Flies’. Similar examples from other countries have come from Christian Morgenstern and Erich Kästner as well as the American Ogden Nash. But when it comes to both quantity and quality, Piet Hein’s Grooks are, even so, something special.

For a long time they appeared under the signature Kumbel Kumbell. Here is the reason why: Piet is the Dutch form of the name Peter or Petrus, which means rock, stone, and Hein is a way of spelling ‘hen’, the old Danish word for a whetstone. ‘Kumbel’, or ‘kumbl’ as it strictly speaking should be written, also means stone, though more a grave monument. In other words, Piet Hein, or Stone Stone can, in a way, be translated by Kumbel Kumbel. He originally wrote the second word with two Ls, also later the signature became just Kumbel – the name he is at least as well known by as his own.

Obviously, since there are to date now over 7,000 – seven thousand! – Grooks, it is impossible to characterise this enormous literary corpus collectively. Innumerable facets glitter: caustic and sensitive, cheerful and serious, grotesque and proverbial. A large number are formulations of what everyone is just thinking, while others add new perspectives to the most everyday things. The touch and the always precise use of language and sophisticated rhythms and rhymes make not only the longer, more lyrical but also the aphoristic ones into true poetry.

He says in one of them:

I can’t help that my belief
is that verses should be brief.
If you think that I am wrong,
read mine twice
to make them long.

The brevity never feels fragmentary, however, for each Grook expresses fully what it sets out to. The following elementary though probably rather unnoticed truth can hardly be expressed more concisely that this:

A half is,
this never alters,
exactly two thirds
of three quarters.


Something he has experienced, because most Grooks need hours of work, he boils down to this: Writing poems is not done with ease. But who says it has to be a breeze?

One of the first Grooks was the justly famous one that goes: Little cat, little cat, walking so alone; tell me whose cat are you – I’m damned well my own. Like many others from the time of the Occupation, it referred to Denmark’s situation, and many of his so-called ‘underground’ Grooks could only be published illegally.

An important characteristic of the Grooks is that they are nearly always accompanied by a drawing. Not for nothing did Piet Hein, as mentioned, begin his career at the Swedish school of art, and countless drawings of the thousands made have been executed with sometimes baroque sometimes elegant lines as a pictorial supplement to texts that one would never have believed could be illustrated. As an example of this abilities in this direction, here is one of his best-known Grooks:


It ought also to be mentioned that he did not only translated a host of his Grooks into English – there is a whole collection of them with the title Grooks – but also a number into Spanish. A number of them were originally composed in these languages and there is no Danish version of them. The first collection came out in book form in 1941, since when a total of 20 volumes has appeared, the best of which – but which are the absolute best of 7,000? – have been collected in ‘Gruk fra all årene’ (Grooks from all the years), 1 and 2 (1963 and 1964). A particularly good Grook anthology appeared in 1949, published by Det danske Forlag with the title ‘Kumbels Fødselsdagskalender’ (Kumbel’s birthday calendar). It contains 377 Grooks, all of them with accompanying drawings.

Countless Grooks contain observations of things that are overlooked by most people. In one of them he says:

He on whom God’s vision falls sees the great within the small. As an example that illustrates to what extent he possesses this vision, the following can be quoted:


A completely different type of Grook is this one:

Living in the moment

To live in the moment's a well-worn routine
that most of the world has perfected;
for some, it's the moment that's already been,
for others, - the one that's expected.

Yet no sort of magi can kindle anew
a past that is over forever,
nor summon the future before it is due:
our moment is now - or it's never.

So brief is the moment in which we may live,
and future or past it isn't.
Whoever would know of what life has to give
must gratefully welcome the present.

But any attempt to illustrate the overwhelming richness of the thousands of Grooks by picking out many types of samples is bound to fail. Despite their vast diversity, however, it is possible to indicate a couple of main tendencies. One is that which is characterised by the Grooks that are extrovert, which have a satirical barb or which contain experiences and observations of use to other people, and which more or less directly give guidance in the art of living. This applies to, among many others, a Grook like this one: Life takes care of what it means just until we ask, it seems, and Love while you’ve got love to give. Live while you’ve got life to live.

Although he explicitly says: Shun advice at any price – that’s what I call good advice, a vast number of his Grooks contain too wise maxims to be ignored!
The other tendency, or type, within the world of Grooks turns in the opposite direction, i.e. expresses what is taking place inside himself. There is a poem he calls Polymania, which sounds like this:

It must be that fate has played one of her tricks that I was born singly and not one of six.

And I’m never successful with what I’d attain, for all six think their own thoughts inside my one brain.

It is understandable that this split – which is probably simply a result of his versatility – sometimes gives rise to a longing for peace from outside impressions. This finds expression, for instance, in the following final lines of a Grook:

Company’s fine to be in, though I find that I cannot disown there’s only one thing I would rather be in and that’s mine when completely alone.

This urge for not only loneliness but liberation from the chaos of phenomena is expressed even more strongly thus:

I lie on my back in the soft waving grass and follow the clouds floating by,
were I but a cloud on a warm summer day reflecting the weather on high.

To just be a cloud sailing gracefully on warmed by sunshine or tossed by the wind
to melt into nothing in vast azure space leaving matter and form far behind.

To follow the law for the shifting of clouds – a law that’s not hard to recall,
to quite disappear in the warmth of the sun and never have been there at all.

Somewhere else he says that had he not been the person he was, he would like to be a white lilac blossoming in the wind, or a shining ball dancing on the top of a jet from a fountain. The same wish to vanish into thin air, for individuality to case, is found in the following, extremely beautiful poem published in 1941:

Alle små der i enge Fri for den strømmende stræben,
gemmer en underlig drøm fri for den dæmmende bred
om havet, det støre, det f rie. skal åen forløses i havet
som stilner den stridende strøm, og evig og fri vare ved

Når løbet er kæmpet til ende, Så går der en luftklar bølge
er havet det mål de skal nå, med vingehvid skumtop på.
havet der frier fra alle Så hvisker de andre bølger:
de kræfter, som tvinger en å. Se dér! Det er Muldmose å.

It cannot be denied that in many of the 90 poems contained in this book, the speculative tone dominates considerably over the emotional, but both the fertility of ideas and the sheer formal beauty are often so wonderful that it must be because of the enormous popularity of the Grooks that the purely lyrical side of Piet Hein’s production has been somewhat overshadowed.

‘Vers i verdensrummet’ (Verses in space) also contains a number of poems addressed to people who have meant something special for Piet Hein, including three of our time’s most prominent researchers: Niels Bohr, who has been a friend of his since youth, Albert Einstein, whom he regularly visited at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and Norbert Wiener, the founder of cybernetics, who write in his last book, while staying at Rungsted Skovhus.

Other visitors to the house include Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley, Thor Heyerdahl and the two wonderful illustrators Albert Engström and the American Saul Steinberg. Among the poets he has characterised or celebrated in verse, and who were also among his friends, one could mention Herman Wildenwey, Arnulf Øverland and, here in Denmark, Johannes V. Jensen and Ludvig Holstein, who, by the way, was also responsible for the first Grooks appearing in book form.

A later collection of poems, ‘Vers af denne verden’ (Verses of this world), 1948, also includes brilliant poems, and the same applies to ‘Du skal plante et træ’ (Plant a tree to grow tall), which appeared in 1960. The two essential features that characterise everything he writes – the cosmic perspective and the fight against all prejudices, including racial ones – are strongly represented in this book, and his need of a larger, universal community forms the basis of a poem with the title ‘Call in the dark’, the first section of which is as follows:

Jeg vågner og lytter i mørket. Noget har rørt sig.
Noget har givet et næsten umærkeligt kny,
En iling har kruset den spejlblanke natlige stilhed.
Nu er den ubrudt påny.
Dær ligger mit barn i sin verden af hvile og drømme,
tryg i en lun lille seng med en bog og en bjørn.
Kalder han på mig i søvne? - Nej, alting er stille.
jeg lægger mig trygt. Da vågner jeg:
grædende børn!

Væggene viger og åbner sig ud mod alverden -
ud mod de dyb hvortil menneskefællesskab når.
Det synger af afstande, åbenhed, menneskets ansvar
for sine mindste, de kommendes menneskekår.
jeg k a n ikke lukke min verden om bare det nære.
jeg ligger og lytter i natten. Der grædes og kaldes.
Det e r ikke fremmede børn som er sultne og bange
og flygter og græder i mørket.
Det er vores alles.

Many poems in this book call out to be cited, but we must here make do with the following, which differs slightly from most of his others:

HANS CHRISTIAN

Vi plejede at vandre lange ture,
fru Andersens Hans Christian og jeg,
fra byens hårde sten og trange mure
ud ad en blomsterbræmmet landevej.

Han var så sær og sårbar, og han havde
så megen skyhed og så mange fejl.
Men hvor han dog faldt til blandt skræppeblade
og følte med en snirkelsnoet snegl.

Han såe det fælles just i det specielle.
I dyr og døde ting. Han nemmed vart
det almengyldigt individuelle.
For alt består af alskens egenart.

Jeg mødte ham en dag i Kongens Have ...
Guvé hvad der blev af ham sidenhen?
Han havde fantasiens nådegave.
Og hvad skal denne verden dog med den!

Han ville vist til scenen. Mon han kom det?
Den grimme ælling! Drengen hed tilsidst
kun Anders And blandt os, som spøgte om det.
Han endte vist ved filmen. Som statist.

Nu lever vi i trit og dør på tælling.
Og levefod er alt, hvad vi forstår.
Hvor er Hans Christian - den grimme ælling
i Danmarks svaneløse andegård?

Anonymous Piet Hein poem in Politiken’s ‘Day to Day’, 13.5. 1938, two years before Kumbel Kumbell began to supply Grooks. The poem is later used as a Grook. Vignette: Axel Nygaard.

The Grand Hotel is a hideous place
but has such a damn good situation.
You can sit all day at the Grand and gaze
at Stockholm Castle’s lousy location.

There in the window you see Sweden’s King
so vexed that he hardly can stand,
because Stockholm Castle is where he must bring
all his time gazing over at Grand.

Even though poetry takes pride of place in Piet Hein’s production, he has also outstanding achievements within other fields. In 1947, he published a little book ‘The Helicopter’, because he had become so interested in this new means of transport that he had acquainted himself with its complex technology. In June of the same year, he landed in the first of these machines to come to Denmark. Part of the book is admittedly a little special, although it can be read with enjoyment because of the enthusiasm and animation that characterises the presentation.

A special sort of book is his ‘Vis electrica’ from 1962. It is a festschrift published by the Issefjord Power Station Electricity Company and, even though most of its contents have a scientific purpose, his humanist attitude to things is there all the time. Between the more factual sections poems and Grooks have been added, while the illustrative material consists of some superb colour illustrations by Arne Ungermann. By the very nature of the assignment, most of the text has to do with the nature and utilisation of electricity. Of a more diversified nature is his only real collection of essays to date, that with the title ‘Kilden og Krukken’ (The source and the pot), which appeared in 1963. It contains small pieces which he calls fables – often slightly reminiscent of Johannes V. Jensen’s myths – and many other, widely differing contributions, including some of the speeches he has given over the years on various official occasions, such as at the Technical University of Denmark, the Academy of Fine Arts and as an honorary freshman in Oslo. The central theme in most of his speeches is his agitation for the ideals that underlie the organisations he, as mentioned, has been an active member of – and which characterise all his poems. A main section in the book is called Technocy and Cultism. It deals with the unfortunate split that has taken place between the scientific-technical and humanist-cultural views of life – a problem that occupies the minds of leading circles the world over.

To an interviewer who expressed surpise at his versatility, Piet Hein said that he, on the contrary, felt that he saw himself as being fairly one-sided, only equipped with a special kind of imagination. That is a modest characterisation of his special mental equipment, which is undeniably of a very unusual kind. Remarkable, first and foremost, is his ability to see things in a completely new light – as if looking behind them. It is presumably his freedom from traditional ways of looking at things that are the point of departure for his talent as an inventor. But that he has been able to come up with fertile new ideas within many areas, not only within science is hardly simply because he comes to the exact problems with a solid foundation within the cultural – and thus is himself an example of the union of the two views of life that is so sorely needed – but surely also because, when it comes to it, he is first and foremost a poet.


Knud Meister - EACH NOW IS NEW - Piet Hein
MARTIN GARDNER - The Recreational Mathematics of Piet Hein